Joseph William Short

Uncle of Ruth (Short) Ellingwood, and one of the pioneers of High River, Alberta. His obituary in the High River Times of 10 January 1924 tells his life (record):

Joseph William Short, among the first pioneers to settle at High River, died on January 8, 1924, after a lingering illness of one year from cancer at the age of 81 years. He came here in the spring of 1883, forty years ago and located on the present Ramage property, west of town, which was then unsurveyed. He witnessed many changes in the country and always took and active interest in the life of the community. He was a very active man, straight and erect in carriage as in character and had the courage of his convictions, in religion and politics.

Born at Newcastle in May 1842, he went as a young man to Brooklyn, New York, into the dry-goods business, and there in 1866 married Julia A. Conklin of Huntington, Long Island. In 1870 they came back to Woodstock, Ontario, where he went into the hardware business; his younger brother John Gerald, Ruth Ellingwood’s father, was a hardware merchant at Woodstock in the 1880s, very probably in the same business [I]. Five of their children were born at Woodstock. By 1880 he was a grain dealer at Waterman, Illinois (the census, as WikiTree has it), and in the spring of 1883 he took the family to the unsurveyed land west of High River, in what was then the North-West Territories; his youngest son, Ellwood, was born there. In 1891 he was at High River with six children. Julia died in 1889 or 1890.

In 1900 he married Mrs. Alice Morley of Winnipeg, a widow, and for a time was Indian agent at Selkirk, Manitoba, where they lived with her children Kitty and Walter; their daughter Alice was born in 1902. By 1906 they were farming again near High River, with five horses, two milk cows and thirty other cattle, and he was the census enumerator for his neighbourhood; his son William farmed in the same township. Alice died in 1908, and in 1911 he was living with his daughter Alice near Medicine Hat (the censuses, as WikiTree gives them).

He was a Presbyterian and a Mason from 10 July 1872, a charter member of the High River Lodge, “a Mason for over fifty years.” His funeral was held in the Chalmers church on 10 January 1924, conducted by the officers of Cornerstone Lodge, and he was buried in the High River (Highwood) Cemetery. At his death he had three sons and four daughters, forty-two grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. His children, as his obituary and Find a Grave give them (source): Charles Conklin (1870-1958) and Edith Emma, Mrs. W. W. McIntosh (1872-1964), both at High River in 1924; Julia Anna, Mrs. Asher (1873-1962), and Mary Jeffrey, Mrs. Rice (1875-1965), both of Vernon, British Columbia; William Hall (1877-1949), of Chinook, Alberta; Ellwood Clinton (1885-1967), of Acme; and Alice Mary (1902-1944). His obituary also names three stepchildren: Mrs. W. H. Short of Chinook, very probably a Morley daughter married to his son William [I], Mrs. Geo. McIntosh of Cereal, and Walter Morley of Fraser Lake, British Columbia. Of his own brothers and sisters, two survived him: “Mrs. James Hay and Mrs. Mary B. Short of Woodstock.” Isabella Hay died four days after him.

A portrait of him in later life, white-haired and moustached, is in the High River local history Leaves from the Medicine Tree, as Find a Grave notes.

Open questions

• Julia Conklin’s death: 1889 (his obituary) or 1890 (Find a Grave).
• His years at Waterman, Illinois, between Woodstock and High River.